Two days ago, after long discussion, we reduced the medications that were keeping Carolyn sleeping most of every day. She could not get awake enough to feed herself, so either an aide or I had to spoon feed her, and she wasn’t eating much.
Yesterday, the morning of the drug reduction, she was awake in the morning for the first time in weeks. She was trying to talk a little, and it was obvious she had a lot to talk about. I couldn’t understand much of it, but I stayed attentive, and smiled and nodded my head a lot.
Her legs strengthened a little, and she could stand with my help without her knees buckling. That makes it so much easier to transfer her from chair to couch to toilet, etc.
I told her, “Welcome back! I missed you!” She smiled and held my hand.
This morning she was wide awake, and talking up a storm when I got to Featherstone. I tried walking her across the floor, but she can only shuffle tiny steps yet. She will be moving pretty good, I think, with a couple more days like these.
She ate lunch in the dining room today, and she can feed herself now. That’s nice. When she was ready to come back to the room, I detected a pretty strong smell, so I told her we were going to the bathroom with her.
Worst accident I’ve seen yet! Evidently her bowels are waking up, also, and diarrhea happened in a major way. I stripped her clothes off and sat her in the shower, where I wore myself out holding her with one hand and using the shower on a hose to clean her up. After a half an hour or so, I had her clean and dressed in clean underwear and clothes, sitting in the front room.
Then I went back to the bathroom, where I cleaned the toilet seat, the shower seat, the floor, and hardest of all, her pants. I had to carefully turn the legs inside out so I could spray clean with the shower head.
My engineering mind kept picturing a long rod with a hook on the end to invert the pant legs. As it was, I had to turn up the cuffs and carefully push them up to the top. Either that, or rubber gloves that go up to the armpit!
My engineering mind also found fault with the incontinent underwear (adult diapers?). The absorptive material is shaped like a mound or hill inside, which pushed excess “stuff” out the leg holes. The proper shape to function better would look more like a trough for better containment.
Anyway, I had just sat down to relax for a minute, and Guardian Hospice came to the room to give her a bath. I told her that would be a good idea, since I’m not sure I got everything. I had already realized I had missed cleaning the wheelchair seat, so I had Carolyn sitting on a “puppy pad” in her rocker.
They commented on the sweat I was still mopping off my face, so I explained the job I had just finished. As I finished wiping the wheelchair seat, I helped Carolyn to stand to transfer her to the wheelchair again so they could move her to the bathroom.
The pad in the rocking chair was seriously soiled. She was still having trouble with diarrhea. So we put another pad in the wheelchair, and the three aides took her in to wash her again. I don’t have words to express my relief and gratitude for Guardian Hospice people.
After they finished, I wheeled her out to the front, where they were serving root beer floats, and we sat back and enjoyed them. She was awake enough to handle the cup with ice cream and root beer, with a straw and a plastic spoon with out spilling any at all. I really have missed her!
As we finished our root beer floats, she was earnestly talking to me, and the words were becoming clearer. They still weren’t making a lot of sense, but I noticed with some trepidation a look in her eyes I haven’t seen in a long time. There was a hunger there, and I know her well enough to know she misses me, too!
I know I’m on the hook, and I’ll have to do something about it soon. The thought scares me a little, because she sometimes forgets who I am when she gets excited, and that is not fun at all.
Some people may object to my frank descriptions of what caring for a wife with dementia is like, with all the gory details, but I write this to educate others in the same predicament, even though I can’t find anyone who quite fits my profile.
Good, clear, honest stories and discussion seem to be in short supply.
If nobody else is writing about such things, I will fill the void.
An old song from the Twenties keeps going around in my head. “Ma, She’s Making Eyes at Me!”
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